


Heartstrings

by Bakageta



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Other, cardiac anatomy, hearts are not good at recovering from major damage, so let's explore how Venom fixed Eddie's heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:00:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26275291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bakageta/pseuds/Bakageta
Summary: The human heart, Venom realizes, does not regenerate easily.
Relationships: Eddie Brock & Venom Symbiote, Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote
Comments: 26
Kudos: 322





	Heartstrings

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [sajastar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sajastar) for beta reading!

When Venom flows back into their perfect match, their Eddie, they realize that the only reason the weakened walls of his heart haven’t ruptured is that the muscle itself lacked strength. The fibrous remains of the cardiac muscle they damaged are still there, still holding together the thinned walls of Eddie’s heart, but that’s all they’re doing. Half of Eddie's heart is doing the work of the whole thing, and it's doing that work poorly.

The human heart, Venom realizes, does not regenerate easily.

If they had time, Venom would figure out how to force the cardiomyocytes to divide. They would layer cells back into place in the fibrinous remains of Eddie's atria and sculpt the walls of his ventricles until they reached their former, thick strength. Eddie's valves would be taut and supple, sealed perfectly against backflow, and their delicate anchoring tendons would be elastic and strong. If they had time, Venom would make Eddie's heart anew, better than ever. It would have been an apology and it would have been a promise.

But there is no time.

So instead of perfection, Venom settles for function. Instead of healing, Venom fills the empty cytoskeletons with the tiniest amount of their volume. In the seconds it takes for Venom to diffuse through the back of Eddie’s throat, flow down into his thoracic cavity, and fill in the empty space in his heart, the irregular rhythm of his heart falters before it becomes steady once again in their grip. They allow the scrap of themself in Eddie’s heart to become more separate, to follow the prompting of the bioelectrical nodes and fibers in Eddie's heart. In the coming fight they will not be able to spare the focus to anticipate each and every beat and stutter that the organ makes.

In the back of their mind, Venom is aware of that scrap of themself as it relaxes and contracts.

Their focus turns to Eddie, and, before they do anything, he clumsily shoves the memories of the last few hours at them. Eddie bound in front of the man— _Drake_ —with the cold smile that never reached his eyes, Eddie defiant even in the face of their leader— _Riot_ —and Eddie deciding to be at least an inconvenience even as he resigns himself to death. Venom does not understand everything they see, but they learn enough to realize that they have even less time than they thought. 

Unaffected by Eddie’s memories, a bit of Venom relaxes and contracts.

At last there is a shared purpose uniting them, and they both feel the rightness of it sing through them as they head towards a fight they will almost certainly lose. Eddie is confused and wrongfooted by it even as he soaks it in. He makes them stop, just before there’s no going back.

_Why now?_ he wonders. 

“What changed your mind?” he asks.

Because he is a perfect, strong host. Because it only took hours for Eddie to include them in his narrative, to call them we. Because Venom has only rarely had a host that didn’t struggle against them, and has never had a host that actively fought alongside them. Because they never had a chance to appreciate their environment before Eddie gave them a moment to look. Because they fit so well inside Eddie and they think Eddie already knows how well they fit around him. 

Because with Eddie they have a chance at everything they have ever wanted.

**“You,”** they simplify. **“You did.”**

Eddie’s heart does a stutter step, and so does the part of Venom within it as they engulf him and race towards what will be a fight for their lives.

It is a hard fight, and Venom is glad that they put distance between their main volume and the part of them that maintains Eddie’s racing heart. The scrap is embedded just enough to keep the heart beating when they’re wrenched apart by Riot and then by screeching feedback. When Eddie is run through by Riot’s blade, it seals the two halves of Eddie’s heart back together while Venom focuses on the delicate tissues of Eddie’s lungs and spinal column.

Eddie screams out their challenge and they both race up the scaffolding with Riot’s discarded blade in hand. The two of them taunt their foe, pierce the rocket’s fuel tank, and catch fire as they fall into the bay. Venom bids Eddie goodbye as they burn.

The piece of symbiote flesh in Eddie’s heart beats strong. 

With no direction other than to fill the weak spots in Eddie’s heart, it scars itself into the cardiac muscle surrounding it. It conforms itself to the connective tissue that scaffolds around it. It becomes specialized. The parts tied into the bioelectric fibers become permanently conductive. The parts that shore up the cardiac walls dedicate themselves to the rhythmic contractions that those fibers signal. What little remains shrouds Eddie’s heart and recovers.

Time passes, marked only by the steady pump of Eddie Brock’s heart.

A consciousness gradually emerges in the sheltered interior of Eddie’s pericardium, soothed by the living rhythm that it surrounds. It builds up until it realizes who and where and what it is.

Weeks after they died, Venom wakes up and brushes hesitantly against their host’s mind.

**Eddie?** they question, suddenly alive and aware and uncertain of the situation they find themself in.

Eddie’s breath hitches.

“Sorry, something just came up,” He makes an apology to his phone, “I’ll call you back later?” There’s a pause as the other person replies, but Venom is more focused on Eddie’s pulse and breathing, both of which have sped up. “Yeah, thanks.”

Eddie hangs up with a touch, takes a deep breath, and asks: “You feeling better?”

They don’t respond immediately, still processing their continued existence alongside their perfect host. They’re inside Eddie’s apartment, mostly cleaned up, and bright morning light is shining through the windows. Eddie’s in good condition, better than when they first bonded, and Venom almost starts to check their host over in more detail before he calls out to them.

“Venom?”

**You felt me?** Eddie is content, Venom can tell, happy and maybe a little anxious. But not sad and not grieving.

“Yeah, you were a weight,” he thumps his palm against his chest and leaves it there, “right here for the past couple’a days.”

**You were fine without me,** Venom observes, bleakly. 

“I wouldn’t’ve been,” Eddie counters, ambling over to an open window. “Dan did a buncha tests on my heart.”

Venom presses up through Eddie’s sternum and tenses against his palm. 

“Bloodwork, EKG, stress test, echo…” Eddie lists and pushes counterpressure against Venom. “They all came back normal, and Dan insisted that was impossible. So I figured you would be fine.

“I would’ve been in pretty bad shape if I didn’t know you were keeping my heart running.” His hand shifts over Venom’s mass and they extend slim bands around his fingers in response.

**Our heart.** Venom cannot actually see, but they can feel, what the heart they’re wrapped around would look like, and they share that with Eddie.

The heart’s anatomy has not changed: there are still four chambers and four valves, the great veins and arteries lead into and out like they should, and the living electric systems signal the organized cascade of a heart beat as they always have. What has changed is the cells that make up the heart. Throughout the walls of the atria and ventricles there are streaks of black symbiote matter adapted perfectly and functioning efficiently in place of the cardiomyocytes. There are thin strands of silver replacing the purkinje fibers that conduct the heart's electrical signals, and some of the tiny tendons, the chordae tendineae, that keep the heart valves from leaking are struck through with black as well.

“Our heart,” Eddie acknowledges, and there’s a warmth that fills his chest at the thought of what Venom did, at how they saved him without him knowing.

**I could not fix it like I fixed everything else,** they admit. **I had to replace the damaged parts.**

“That’s how it goes sometimes,” Eddie comforts with words and pressure and touch. “Not usually with organs, but we’re a unique case I think.”

**Very unique,** Venom agrees, arching into the lines of Eddie’s palm.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! I'm on [tumblr](https://bakageta.tumblr.com) if you want to say hey. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are very much appreciated.


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